Unintended consequences

A bad bill to weaken regulatory agencies has undermined a good law to stop pill mills.

November 29, 2010

Florida lawmakers have decided they want a say over many of the state's rules and regulations, grunt work usually left to state agencies. They think Florida's businesses need protection from bureaucratic Voldemorts and their diabolical regulations.

Makes a great sound bite, until reality bites back. Which it has.

Consider the law passed earlier this year to deal with shady clinics and medical offices whose primary business is dispensing pain medications.

The need for the law was indisputable. Florida has become a major supplier of prescription drugs for junkies and dealers throughout the Southeast. In Florida alone, prescription drugs were identified as causing nearly 2,500 deaths in 2009.

That's seven Floridians dying every day.

The crackdown was wildly popular in the Legislature, with the measure passing the House and the Senate unanimously. The governor signed it and the new law went into effect Oct. 1. Sort of.

Turns out the state Board of Medicine hadn't finalized all the rules and regulations needed to enforce the pill mill law before the new, veto-proof Legislature started flexing its muscle.

The Legislature met on Nov. 16 and overturned Gov. Charlie Crist's veto of a separate bill, one that gives lawmakers the power to bless or reject regulations likely to have a $1 million or more impact on the economy over five years. Considering the size of Florida and its economy, that's a laughably low bar.

The upshot is this: Portions of Florida's pill mill law are on hold, possibly until next year when the Legislature deigns to say whether state bureaucrats are being too mean to pain clinics.

This is terrific news for pill mills, addicts and Appalachian dope dealers who make the rounds at Florida's pain clinics before heading back to the hollows of Kentucky and Tennessee.

It also gives pain-clinic lobbyists another shot at persuading legislators that the burden of more regulation is too great.

Lobbyists must love the Legislature's move to micro-manage regulations. It means they now get two bites at the apple — one when the Legislature debates a law and another when it debates the specific regulations needed to enact it.

Given that some lawmakers appear not to have read the original bill seizing regulatory control from the executive branch, we put the odds at next to zero that lawmakers will actually read painfully boring regulations about growth, the environment, insurance, pill mills, etc.

Someone will have to help them understand these complex rules during a busy legislative session.

Advantage: lobbyists.

One of the lawmakers behind this bill was none other than Rep. Chris Dorworth of Lake Mary, the 2014 House speaker-in-waiting. At last he gets to claim a major legislative victory — in this case, one that's keeping Florida from fully enacting an important law.